A Dawn Of A Different Color
by YamiPaladinofChaos
Summary: [Onigumo x Kikyo] Three dawns, three beginnings.


Disclaimer- I don't own Inuyasha

He was dirty. 

It went deeper than the smudges of dirt on his rough skin, past the ragged, messy locks of hair, beyond the scraps of cloth that made up his clothes.

It was in his blood.

_The child of a whore,_ they hissed, at the corners of his eyes, as they passed him in the streets.

_She's not,_ he snarls, his eyes dark and angry and full of the fight that only someone with nothing to lose and everyone against them can have.

They ignore him, they ignore that basic, driving need in him to fight back because that's all he can do.

He fights, he screams, he hits.

_Little bastard!_

They scream, they hit back, and they hit back _harder._

It doesn't stop, and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

_What do they know_, he whispers to himself, clutching his hurts and his pain, walking in the shadows because the light won't have him.

---

They brought him to the priestesses as a last resort. Because, where the kindness and care of normal people cannot apply, perhaps the divine power of those devoted to their gods can save.

_He has a demon in him,_ they lie, or perhaps they don't. Perhaps he is possessed, perhaps that rage, that hurt, all of that is just a demon lurking in the soul.

Or maybe it's not.

But the priestesses took him, kicking, screaming, biting, dirty, bleeding, bruised, _damaged_.

Put him to work, they thought. A good day's work is better than a good beating.

He keeps quiet. The priestesses don't bother him as much as the villagers, but he can feel the hidden contempt in their eyes when they look at him.

By now, it doesn't matter as much.

Because he's quiet, they let him have a tiny cot in some deserted room that no one's used since its creation. It's a threadbare kindness, but it's still kindness, and so he feels awkward and unusual when he's laying in his flimsy bed.

There's no one to fight, no one to strike and to be struck by.

He wanders the halls when it's silent and dark as an occupied grave, and feels that he doesn't belong.

---

He sees her, not so much by chance as it is she is walking by and he sees someone who is beautiful and lovely as a well made sculpture, and just as untouchable.

It is dawn, he will remember. The light is just breaking and he's standing apart from the warm yellow of it's glow, watching it embrace the world while remaining in the shadows.

She is alone, standing in its sweeping majesty, the aurulent radiance splashing against her milky skin. She is a girl yet not a child, and out of the ordinary entirely.

She is something of such beauty that he cannot help but want her, want her and desire her.

But when she turns, her eyes catch his for only a moment, and the desire crystalizes into something real.

The moment is showered in golden radiance, and he knows something has begun.

_She will be mine._

"Kikyo? Kikyo!" they call out, and suddenly everything is lost and he hates them all for it. The rage spills out into his blood, a black flame, but the light keeps him in the darkness, and the girl leaves as though she had never seen him.

The hate falls away to a dull pulse after that, but it remains, beating against his heart, waiting, and wanting.

---

"You were looking at me." Her voice has an imperial quality to it, and he wonders if she is a princess from Heaven. She stands, framed with the light, and it spills out until his darkness is pushed back to the very edges of the room.

"Yes." He has no shame, because he is shame.

Her lips quirk, and she seems almost amused by him, as though she were a child and he some object of interest. "What is your name?"

"I have none." Now there is shame, but there is also a rage that runs deep within.

"You lie." The smirk is something hateful but it is still beautiful. "What did they call you, in your village?" Her voice pushes against him, pushes until he's quite certain he's about to be washed away in her light.

A spider trickles down from the ceiling, thrown into focus by the light, but still in the darkness.

"They... they called me _Onigumo_." The name is like acid in his mouth, burning its way to freedom.

"Demon spider?" she laughs, and it is high and cruel and he hates her, hates her almost as much as he wants her. "How very unusual."

She steps away, and lets the light in. "Very well then, demon spider. I bid you good day."

If not for the fact that she had left, he would have lunged for her throat.

---

They don't approve, he knows. Kikyo, the prodigy priestess, the pure one, the holy one, has taken an interest in the bastard orphan Onigumo.

So he smiles when they pass him now, hiding his triumph behind polite smiles and respectful bows. They cannot touch him.

"You're enjoying my attention." Kikyo is blunt yet graceful with him, always pushing, never fearing.

"You're giving it to me." He responds tartly, leaning into the shade of the tree. "Why?" his voice is rough and harsh but she remains completely at ease.

A smile plays on her lips, teasing him and the pulsing want within. "Because you interest me." She says lightly, mockingly, and leaves him to his shadows.

---

"I will have you, one day." He promises her. The priestess's threadbare kindness has finally broken, and so he stands at the gates.

"No, you will not." Kikyo promises as well, her eyes sparkling as the dawn light breaks.

It is a fiery today, warm and fierce indigo spilling out like a flood across the land. It washes over him, baptizing him in its flame.

"We shall see." The hate, the want, pulses against his breast, and his clenching fists yearn to choke her, his aching arms long to take her to him.

"Farewell, demon spider." She laughs once more, and it rings out, cutting apart anything unspoken.

The dawn's fire is breaking upon the world, reaching its peak.

He steps toward it, and he knows that something has begun.

---

Years of fire and blood have appeased the hate in his breast, but not the wanting. Countless women, their skin, their faces, their voices, all of them have done nothing for his want. And as his want grows, his hate grows, and the fire and the blood are everything to him.

He watches the dying light in a man's eyes, the slow, heaving gasps that are choked with thick rivers of blood, and he finds that it does nothing, because it is not _her _eyes that are fading, _her_ last breath that he is stealing.

He hears the fire bring out the screams of the men and their women, their children, wafting the smell of flesh seared and life burnt away, and it is empty, because _her_ flesh remains as soft and untouched as it does in every waking dream that haunts his step.

---

When the fire burns his flesh, and his blood is boiled away, the hatred and the want become his all. The pulse grows stronger as his life grows weaker, as if feeding, feasting upon the tattered remains of his strength.

When she finds him, the pulse becomes a throbbing ache, screaming and violent, and yet his voice is stolen, his arms unmoving.

"What is your name?" Kikyo asks softly, so close and yet untouchable.

"Onigumo," he breathes, and when her face does not change, nor do her eyes show any hint of remembrance, the pulse becomes a roar that cannot be stopped.

---

The roar continues, unceasing.

_I will have her._

It deafens his soul, coursing through his tattered, ragged body.

_I will have her._

The demons appear, in their multitude, their teeth shining like swords, their eyes glittering with hungry fire.

_I will have her._

He screams as the roar and the promise become one, and finally find a voice.

---

The pulse of wanting and hating becomes the pulse of his blood, the roar becomes his voice.

He is not Onigumo.

He is what Onigumo was always meant to become.

He steps out of the darkness, breathing in his first breath, watching as the horizon begins to shatter, as everything finally begins.

The dawn is a bloody red as Naraku steps into the world.


End file.
